Summations Only

I suppose that you can provide even one link to where a Theistic evolutionist made such a claim.One of the very first lessons in the Bible is that man does not even need God to be moral, much less Christianity.Have you ever read the Bible?

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Genesis 3:21-22
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.

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What is this "problem"? What's wrong with an ultimately baseless morality? That's just not true. Utlitarianism is just one branch consequationalism, which is paralleled by other types of ethics like deontology.You can read about that kind of stuff here:Normative ethics - WikipediaOn top of all that, you could just be a Muslim instead. Or some other religion. They've have their own bases in morality that aren't necessarily based on the Bible. Sure there is. Like I said early, even after you realize that Genesis contains errors, The Golden Rule still has its value. That it has value is a reason to accept it. Too, you could just plain old like it and it accept it for that reason. Or you could accept it becuase following it makes you feel better. Or because you think it will get you into heaven. Or... well, as you can see there are other reasons.Setting up this false dichotomy as a way to force Biblicalism as some sort of necessary default is just terrible theology, by the way. You should prop it up on its merits instead. Falling on it as the least worst makes it look bad. People have been saying that crap for a long time... Did you know there were people who believed that you'd have to throw the whole Bible away if it was proven that the Earth wasn't in the center of the solar system? Don't you think that is a bit silly? Well you're in the same boat. Why not? The Golden Rule still has value even though Genesis contains errors.

We've traveled above the sky and discovered no firmament, no heaven and comparatively little water. Is Christianity therefore worthless?I mean, I think it's pretty worthless - I think all religion is worthless - but I thought that this was the entire reason that faith is deployed. Most of the Christians I've spoken about it with have indicated that they have faith that the stories, whether true or false, point to difficult to grasp spiritual truths.This kind of religion isn't rendered worthless upon the destruction of an inerrant Bible. It's rendered worthless on other grounds. I actually agree. If you establish that a collection of books contains provable errors such as the Bible has, then one should not rely on that collection of books for facts that are not verifiable by other means - since it stands a reasonable chance of being as wrong as everything else.If the Bible is error prone, it demonstrates that it is a human document. And if ancient humans made mistakes about the cosmos, life, and geology, why would anyone believe they would get right such things as the meaning of life, or the other things you regard as 'the most important things in life'.Really: the liberal Christians have to do something of a special pleading. Sure, they say, the Bible makes errors in History, Linguistics, Biology, Geology, Astronomy and Cosmology - but the one thing it always gets right is matters of spirit.

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You've managed to generate some interesting discussions in a thread that was started by you to express your worries that you are despised.If you are despised, some people are at least willing to spend a little time of their lives dedicated to discussing your opinions. That's got to be worth something. It is not that your views are rubbing people the wrong way, per se (I guess it's possible that some people have been rubbed wrongly). It is that people disagree with your views, and this being a website about debate, they will use whatever tools the are comfortable with in the debater's handbook to criticize those views. This often feels like you yourself are being attacked. Believe me, I've butted heads with many of those that have been around here long enough, I understand the instinct to read opposing and critical arguments as being attacks on the person.Personally, I enjoy the adrenaline of reading a scathing criticism of my views. That said, it's an acquired taste, not for the light-hearted. It's not your IQ that counts around here. It is your capacity to construct polite but forceful arguments, retorts, and rebuttals. There is a side market in witty remarks. This is probably easier for those of higher IQs but there is no reason that a reasonably intelligent person can't construct a reasonably polite and well written argument.Let's examine Newton. We can presume he had a high IQ. If he did not, we could certainly write IQ off completely as a remotely valid measure of intelligence. He had some weird views. Some of those views turned out right, others did not. I'm reasonably confident that the manner in which Newton argued regarding Alchemy or Theology, was still in the intelligent style as his discussions on politics or minting. You are welcome.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You actually have done no such thing, but that is besides the point. If you had actually shown that those things are not true, the bible would turn out to be untrustworthy. You could not look to it as a source of ultimate truth. It only has worth in that people can use it for good ends. You can also use a box of capn crunch cereal for good ends, but you would never use it to look for the ultimate purpose and meaning in life. If the bible is not true, there is no basis for building either upon it.

That would be an effective retort had I claimed that I had. I said 'we' and I obviously wasn't referring to you and me. I was referring to we humans. Yes, indeed, but does that make Christianity worthless? Unless, like many Christians, you special plead that things like 'ultimate truth' or 'spiritual values' are trustworthy even as the natural facts are false. Unless it is true, in some respects; In the important ways.

What specifically?- Oni[ABE] Weren't you leaving? Or did you just need to drag this thread into another debate that can be found anywhere else on this site? Did you really need this thread? Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

Well you've accepted that the bible is incorrect on many issues and is therefore not "true" in the absolute sense that many claim.You've also accepted that we don't need the bible for our morality.So we're only left with wondering whether it nevertheless gives us a "purpose and meaning in life."And of course it could if you want it to. Some people get the same from Jainism, some from art and music, some from charitable works and some from sex. Personally, I get it from family, friends, my work and a great steak every so often.Whatever floats your boat as they say.The problem with your belief though is that the moment you start to doubt that it's actually true (ie that there's a loving god that cares about you, who is Christian - and only exactly your kind of Christian - who will look after you in paradise or send you to burn in hell depending mostly on what you do with no clothes on and who you do it with.) the moment you start to doubt that, it does rather mess up the head.So, if it's a purpose and meaning for life you're looking for, I'd recommend you look for it in life and leave whatever happens after to look after itself.

People find "ultimate purpose and meaning in life" from sources other than the Bible, including multiple other religions.Logically, since the Bible (and many other religious texts) insists that it is mutually exclusive with the others, at least some of the sources of "ultimate purpose and meaning in life" must be false.Yet despite the necessary falsity of at least some of these worldviews, people still derive "ultimate purpose and meaning in life."If (as you would believe) people can garner a sense of "ultimate purpose and meaning in life" from a false Koran or a false Rig-Veda or a false Dianetics, then why could people not garner the same thing from a false Bible?Even Jesus in the Bible specifically made use of parables, fictional stories used to illustrate a spiritual or moral point. The idea is more important than the factuality of the events describes.Why, then, does the truth or falsity of the claim that the Earth was Created in six days need to be literally true? If the story of the Good Samaritan didn't need to be literally true to illustrate a point, why do other specific stories?I'm an Atheist, I don't even use any religious text as a source of "ultimate purpose and meaning in life." I derive those from my own system of ethics and personal preferences - I determine the meaning of my own life, and I decide my ultimate purpose.To be logically consistent with your claim here, you must believe that all non-Christians (and even other Christians who use a different canon for their Bibles) live their lives without any purpose or meaning in their lives...yet they clearly don't feel that way. Why do you think that is?

Surely for Christianity to be worthwhile, only certain things need to be true: such that there is a God, that he prefers good to evil, that he was incarnate in Jesus, and so forth. If the Bible was reliable enough to make these inferences from it, then would it matter if it also contained errors?As it happens, I'm in the middle of reading Lowen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, about errors, omissions, and distortions in high school history textbooks. Despite these errors, someone reading the textbooks would be correct in inferring that the War of Independence took place, that George Washington existed, and so forth.Look at it this way. Suppose you die and go to heaven and stand before the great white throne, and God says: "Well done for believing in me and my son, who, as you see, is sitting here at my right hand ... oh, by the way, I gotta tell you, Genesis isn't true, I didn't write it." Would you then exclaim: "Oh, in that case Christianity is worthless!" Of course not. Either it is or it isn't. This cannot depend on the question of whether the whole of the Bible is accurate and to be taken literally.

Simply WJDD: wither that sucker! (Matt. 21:19)

Lots of people have been taught that the Bible is without error. This is part and parcel of the belief statements of many a church and/or denomination.Dare we Christians allow ourselves to question this? Was not the law written on human hearts and not in a books of words and pages? If the Holy Spirit is living and active, is not the lesson that we as Christians to learn more about how we relate to others, as well as morality and wisdom from many different potential sources and contained in many living daily parables, literature from the past, and lessons learned through daily experience? As to how we would discern, well...isnt the Holy Spirit our guide on such matters?

Decades ago on CompuServe there was an odd fellow named "Suds" (hopefully, that was only his nickname). He said that he was a retired mathematician and that he had invented Gray Code and that he had suffered a few strokes and could no longer work as a mathematician. He also strongly advocated an odd form of word magick, that reality is determined entirely by what we say it is.But he once did come up with a brilliant observation: It does not matter one bit whether Christianity is true or false, but rather all that matters is that Western Europe believed it to be true and acted upon that belief. Indeed, Christianity did have an immense influence on European history and culture and it does not matter one bit whether Christianity was even true, just so long as those generations had believed it to be true. No, rather the situation is that humanists have adopted the morality found in society. It is society that determines morality, not religion. Arbitrary rules that don't make any sense in society end up getting dropped and abandoned, which is why so much of that "absolute morality" in the Bible is completely ignored, even by the most fervent believers in that "absolute morality".What actually happened in the past was that religion incorporated the society's moral standards and became the vehicle for the society's expression of those standards and became responsible for passing it on to the next generation, and along the way generated a mythology of how those standards had come about and why they must be followed. At which point "Suds' Law" kicked in and the religious tradition became the standard for morality, even to the point of new cultures adopting a foreign religious tradition as their own. And then centuries later, humanists return to looking to society as a baseline source of morality, though examining that morality and its consequences in order to evaluate it.As former Mexican President Portillo had said on "60 Minutes" circa 1980: "It's been a long time since we've worn feathers." The only real problem that would cause would be if their religious beliefs regarding morality were to have set them up for a fall. If they believe, as far too many fundamentalists have insisted to me in the past, that without that biblical basis morality (most often expressed as "if God did not exist") could not possibly exist and there is no reason for anyone to behave themselves, even to the point that it would be alright for them to become an axe murderer. Of course, such a belief is utter foolishness besides being just plain wrong. And again it's not the lack of a biblical basis for morality that would be the least bit of a problem, but rather those individuals' religious beliefs about what that would mean that would create the real problem. And your point is, what?

The cake is a lie.

Hi ForEverYoung,Victor Stenger is a well known atheist who has a column in this week's New Scientist titled The God issue: God is a testable hypothesis. I don't share many views with the anti-religion set, but he does have one interesting thing to say that touches on the discussion here: If religion is the source of morality how do you explain the fact that atheistic societies like the former Soviet Union did not experience eruptions of rampant immorality with lying and stealing and fornicating and murder at meteoric rates higher than any other country in the world? Why don't crime rates correlate with levels of atheism? Why doesn't the most atheistic country in Europe (France) have far higher murder rates than the least (Turkey), and why do both have rates less than the United States?I'm not asking for answers to these rhetorical questions. I'm more asking why you're taking a stance that seems so totally disconnected from reality. How can you hope to convince many of a position that requires ignorance of the true state of the world?--Percy

That is what Dogma and the church is for. All this nonsense is caused by Sola Scriptura and the need of that crowd to have a literal and truthful document, when everyone else knows they don’t have one. Word. If this guy was despised I think no one would respond. It’s the reason y’all let us hang here, because you need an opposing POV for this site and debate to function, I don’t care if I am correct or not, it’s more entertaining to participate. EXACTLY! That is why I am here. I wish I could come up with something scathing to say to you right now, but you are making a lot of sense right now. 5/5 stars, man.